save for a large cupboard that filled the whole of
one wall; the others, mildewed and stained, were covered with a greyish
paper, which here and there hung away in strips.

Heron crossed this ante-chamber, and with his knuckles rapped against a
small door opposite.

"Hola!" he shouted, "Simon, mon vieux, tu es la?"

From the inner room came the sound of voices, a man's and a woman's,
and now, as if in response to Heron's call, the shrill tones of a child.
There was some shuffling, too, of footsteps, and some pushing about
of furniture, then the door was opened, and a gruff voice invited the
belated visitors to enter.

The atmosphere in this further room was so thick that at first de Batz
was only conscious of the evil smells that pervaded it; smells which
were made up of the fumes of tobacco, of burning coke, of a smoky lamp,
and of stale food, and mingling through it all the pungent odour of raw
spirits.

Heron had stepped briskly in, closely followed by de Batz. The man
Dupont with a mutter of satisfaction put down his lanthorn and curled
himself up in a corner of the antechamber. His interest in the spectacle
so favoured by citizen Heron had apparently been exhausted by constant
repetition.

De Batz looked round him with keen curiosity with which disgust was
ready enough to mingle.

The room itself might have been a large one; it was almost impossible to
judge of its size, so crammed was it with heavy and light furniture of
every conceivable shape and type. There was a monumental wooden bedstead
in one corner, a huge sofa covered in black horsehair in another. A
large table stood in the centre of the room, and there were at least
four capacious armchairs round it. There were wardrobes and cabinets, a
diminutive washstand and a huge pier-glass, there were innumerable boxes
and packing-cases, cane-bottomed chairs and what-nots every-where. The
place looked like a depot for second-hand furniture.

In the midst of all the litter de Batz at last became conscious of two
people who stood staring at him and at Heron. He saw a man before him,
somewhat fleshy of build, with smooth, mouse-coloured hair brushed away
from a central parting, and ending in a heavy curl above each ear; the
eyes were wide open and pale in colour, the lips unusually thick and
with a marked downward droop. Close beside him stood a youngish-looking
woman, whose unwieldy bulk, however, and pallid skin revealed the
sedentary life and the ravage